Quick heads up that I had a great conversation with Amanda McCracken, host of the the Longing Lab podcast, last week. We talked all things limerence and a bit about the origin of the blog and why I started writing about limerence.
There’s also an interview in an earlier episode with Dr Giulia Poerio from the University of Sussex who ran the research project on limerence that I linked to a while ago.
Also well worth a listen.
Thanks Dr L! I enjoyed the podcast. It was very informative!
Dr. Tom, it was very insightful and I appreciate the work you do. I will make sure to check out the earlier interview also.
Limerence wasn’t forgotten or left behind. Researchers just didn’t adopt Dorothy Tennov’s terminology. It’s just more common to call it romantic love or passionate love. If you check Google Scholar, for example, Love and Limerence is cited over 1,000 times.
Person addiction: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00687/full
Compared to OCD: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254734807_Blood_Levels_of_Serotonin_Are_Differentially_Affected_by_Romantic_Love_in_Men_and_Women
Also see Helen Fisher’s comments:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080210054316/https://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-02-06-limerence_N.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU9QQffGeIc&t=695s
There are also already a bunch of studies on attachment style and romantic obsession:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366163287_Adaptive_and_maladaptive_love_attitudes
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338708581_Why_are_you_passionately_in_love_Attachment_styles_as_determinants_of_romantic_passion_and_conflict_resolution_strategies
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042813017035
Reported r values are 0.19, 0.24, 0.27, 0.47 and 0.52, so weak to moderate correlations, around 10% of the variance.
Just stop assuming limerence is some other thing and there is already a bunch of research on this.